In case you are staring at an Oscar ballot this afternoon or this evening and have no idea what to select, especially in the “down ballot” categories such as documentaries, foreign language film, or the technical awards, never fear.  Lean on the professional oddsmakers to help to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Instead of […]

> Los Angelenos will have a chance to get advance looks at some of this year’s Oscar candidates at the AFI Film Festival, which begins in just about 2 weeks.  Today the Festival announced the Gala and Special Screenings, which typically make up the bulk of the high-profile titles, and they include quite a few […]

  In any given year, there are perhaps 15 movies that can even be seriously entertained in a Best Picture conversation, so with the combination of a potential 10 Oscar nominees under the new rules and the weeks of preliminary awards, Top 10 Lists, predictions and speculations that occupy the weeks preceding the announcement, the […]

  …and now it’s all real.  AMERICAN HUSTLE and GRAVITY lead the Academy Award nominations with 10 each, with 12 YEARS A SLAVE right behind at 9, and those three are probably the leading candidates for Best Picture as of this moment.  But there’s plenty more to talk about, so here are the marquee categories […]

  It’s time to gather for the 2020 Academy Awards, which… may be the most boring in recent memory.  The favorites currently seem to be overwhelming, and with no host to carry us through the proceedings, if 1917, Sam Mendes, Joaquin Phoenix, Renee Zellweger, Brad Pitt and Laura Dern win, it’s going to be a […]

Based on the fast national ratings for Sunday, the Academy Awards telecast should average around a 13.4 rating with adults 18-49 (adjusting the preliminary 12.1 rating upward to account for the Pacific time zone seeing the show three hours before the normal network feed pattern).  If our estimated adjustment is correct, this would be the […]

  As with Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, we’re taking a last look at the factors for and against each nominee for Best Actress, with deserving performances assumed and precursor awards put to the side.  Also read about the Best Actor, Best Director and Best Picture races. BEST ACTRESS AMY ADAMS, American Hustle WHY:  With 5 nominations in […]

  The National Board of Review is an organization whose members are largely unknown (and the opinions of whom are of zero interest), with an existence that gets noticed on exactly one day of the year, like that one groundhog whose shadow is checked each February.  (Put another way, it’s the Hollywood Foreign Press Association […]